Jeanne Brooks-Gunn - Böcker

The poverty rate for children in the United States exceeds that of all other Western, industrialised nations except Australia. Moreover, poverty among children has increased substantially since 1970, affecting more than one-fifth of US children. These persistent high rates require new ideas in both research and public policy. Escape from Poverty presents such ideas. Four modes of possible change are addressed: mothers' employment, child care, father involvement, and access to health care. It examines the implications of these new policy-driven changes for children. The editors have developed an interdisciplinary perspective, involving demographers, developmental psychologists, economists, health experts, historians, and sociologists - a framework essential for addressing the complexities inherent in the links between the lives of poor adults and children in our society.

The poverty rate for children in the United States exceeds that of all other Western, industrialised nations except Australia. Moreover, poverty among children has increased substantially since 1970, affecting more than one-fifth of US children. These persistent high rates require new ideas in both research and public policy. Escape from Poverty presents such ideas. Four modes of possible change are addressed: mothers' employment, child care, father involvement, and access to health care. It examines the implications of these new policy-driven changes for children. The editors have developed an interdisciplinary perspective, involving demographers, developmental psychologists, economists, health experts, historians, and sociologists - a framework essential for addressing the complexities inherent in the links between the lives of poor adults and children in our society.

The adolescent period has attracted much attention as an ideal period for investigating interactive models incorporating biological maturation with intra- and interpersonal development. The focus of this volume is on adolescent transitions in three domains: the peer system, the family system, and school and work contexts. Its goal is to highlight specific aspects of innovative research programs and initiatives, and look forward to future directions in the field. Because interest in adolescence has spanned the disciplines, this volume reflects a multidisciplinary perspective--presenting research and methods from life-span development, sociology, anthropology, and education to provide exemplars of the range of approaches used in understanding the processes and transitions of adolescent development. These exemplars encompass the breadth not only of the investigation of adolescence--from survey research on drug use to ethnographic studies of involvement in criminal activities--but also of individual differences in the experience of adolescent transitions--from the transition to college and work in White, middle-class youth to the work experiences of urban, African-American high school students. The chapters collected here offer a rich sample of the diversity of research experience with an emphasis on in-depth investigation of adolescent transitions. The volume will serve as a resource to investigators across several disciplines as it identifies approaches and recent findings from alternate fields.

Based on a summer institute of the Family Research Consortium, this book presents theory and research from leading scholars working on issues of risk and resilience in families. Focusing on the splits and bonds that shape children's development, this volume's primary goal is to stimulate theoretical and empirical advances in research on family processes. It will be valuable to developmental, social, and clinical psychologists, sociologists, and family studies specialists.

A randomized trial evaluated the efficacy of 17 Early Head Start (EHS) programs. 3,001 low-income families with a pregnant women or an infant under 12 months were assigned to a treatment or control group. Data were collected when children were 1, 2, 3, and 5 years old. Analyses examined (1) impacts at ages 2 and 3 (while services were being offered) and at age 5, and (2) contributions of early education experiences across children's first 5 years of life.Child outcomes included cognition, language, attention, behavior problems, and health; maternal outcomes included parenting, mental health, and employment

Based on a summer institute of the Family Research Consortium, this book presents theory and research from leading scholars working on issues of risk and resilience in families. Focusing on the splits and bonds that shape children's development, this volume's primary goal is to stimulate theoretical and empirical advances in research on family processes. It will be valuable to developmental, social, and clinical psychologists, sociologists, and family studies specialists.

Using data from the first 2 phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, we examine the links between maternal employment in the first 12 months of life and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children at age 3, at age 4.5, and in first grade. Drawing on theory and prior research from developmental psychology as well as economics and sociology, we address 3 main questions. First, what associations exist between 1st year maternal employment and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children in the first seven years of life? Second, to what extent do any such associations vary by the child's gender and temperament or the mother's occupation? Third, to what extent do mother's earnings, the home environment (maternal depressive symptoms, sensitivity, and HOME scores), and the type and quality of child care mediate or offset any associations between 1st-year employment and child outcomes, and what is the net effect of 1st-year maternal employment once these factors are taken into account?We compare families in which mothers worked full time (55%), part time (23%), or did not work (22%) in the first year. Our main results pertain to non-Hispanic White children (N = 900) although we also carry out some analyses for a small sample of African-American children (N = 113). Our findings provide new insight as to the net effects of 1st-year maternal employment as well as the potential pathways through which associations between 1st-year maternal employment and later child outcomes, where present, come about. Our structural equation modeling results indicate that, on average, the associations between 1st-year maternal employment and later cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes are neutral because negative effects, where present, are offset by positive effects. These results confirm that maternal employment in the 1st year of life may confer both advantages and disadvantages and that for the average non-Hispanic White child those effects balance each other.